Learning to Blush (11 page)

“Alright, that’s it!” Graham threw down his electronic tablet on his desk and stood quickly up from his chair. “I’m shoving that ball up your ass!”

Thorton looked at Graham like he had appeared out of thin air. “Cranky,
Grahamikins
?” was all he replied with, his lip curling with amusement. Graham was taller—he was always taller than him—but Graham being able to shove anything up Thorton's ass was laughable. Thorton was still bigger, bulkier, and was just as fast.

“Just because you don’t care if you pass your exam doesn’t mean I don’t!” Graham growled, pointing at his desk.

Despite the fact that it was his own backside that was still bearing welts, he teased, “Why? Will your Daddy spank your widdle bottom if you don’t get an A?”

Graham suddenly punched him in the arm with a force that Thorton didn’t know was in him.

“Owe!”

“You are such an ass, Thorton. And you’re in the same boat as me! Have you ever tried to NOT get into trouble?”

“Yeah.” Thorton rubbed out the numbness in his arm and then threw the ball against the ceiling again. “It was boring.”

Graham’s jaw clenched firmly, and he snarled, “Do it. Do it one more time. I want you to go ahead and throw that ball against the ceiling
one more time
. After I’m through with you, you will be burping up rubber for the next decade!”

Thorton looked at Graham, then at the ball in his hand, and then once more at Graham. And then, of course, he tossed it against the ceiling again. Before it could even make a ‘
ka-thump
’ noise against the ceiling, Graham had Thorton in a headlock, dragged him off of his bed, and was pounding his fist into his ribs while Thorton beat his own fists into Graham’s stomach.

It didn’t last long before a noise from outside the window made both of them pause in curiosity: “Daddy! I’m sorry!
Please
!”

“Whoa, no way!” Thorton said, popping himself out of Graham’s frozen headlock and jumping to his feet. They both bounded to the window. “
Kella’s
in trouble?”

Graham’s older sister by two years was more than a goody two-shoes. She was perfect in every way. Perfect looks, perfect manners, perfect grades. In Thorton’s whole life—at least since his own father died when he was five and he had to move in with his mother’s brother and his family—he hadn’t seen Kella’s parents even raise their voices to her. Hell, half of Thorton’s childhood punishments were surely from being a pain in Kella’s ass or antagonizing her.

So, naturally, when he looked out the window and saw his uncle, Admiral Jack Masterson, lead Kella from Jack's cruiser and into the house by her ear, Thorton thought something surely wonderful was happening.

“Haha! Must be my lucky day!” He rubbed his hands together sadistically, the sides of his mouth curling up into a smile. He walked quickly towards the door, suddenly not afraid of his uncle. No; Thorton wouldn’t miss the punishment of Kella Masterson if his life depended on it.

“Thorton, it’s none of our business…” Graham was saying, but he was right on Thorton’s heels. Quiet as mice, they wandered down the hallway and down the servant stairs towards Jack’s office—it was a place that was commonly forgotten about by Graham’s father, and it had a slot in the wall for the trash bin that was just wide enough to spy through. Thorton quickly and quietly moved the trash bin aside and they both leaned down and pressed their cheeks up to the wall.

“Queenie!” Jack barked when he reached his office and propelled Kella inside. Kella’s face was already red and wet with tears. Thorton almost felt bad for Little Miss Perfect…
Almost
.

Graham’s mother appeared at the doorway at the sound of her name. “Jack, what’s the matter?” she said, her eyes widening at Jack’s angry expression. She put her hand to her mouth. “What’d Thorton do this time?”

Thorton and Graham exchanged glances, but Graham’s face was
far
more amused at his mother’s assumption than Thorton was.

“It’s not Thorton,” Jack said crisply, and gestured to Kella, who was standing behind him, looking awkward, miserable, and scared. Queenie seemed extremely surprised to see her oldest daughter in Jack’s office. “I want you to get the girls in here right now.”

“What’d she—” Queenie started to ask, and Thorton and Graham held their breath for the answer.

Jack disappointed them all. He merely grit out his order again, “Get the girls
now
.”

Queenie swallowed, not daring to broach any argument. She had argued in the beginning of her marriage; she had fought against and defied Jack as much as she could. But now, she didn’t dare. She knew what defiance would get her. She nodded and turned away from the door to collect her daughters.

When Queenie was gone, Jack turned to his daughter, who was already choking with sobs. For a quick moment, Thorton saw pity flash across Jack’s face, but the man quickly replaced it with resolve. “Get out of your veil and dress,” he demanded. “Fold them up neatly. When I come back, I want you only in your underthings. You know the drill, Kella.”

“Daddy, please don’t do this! Don’t be angry with me,” she begged, not even looking him in the eye.

If it was possible to get out of a punishment from Jack, surely this would have been the time. Thorton had no idea what Kella had done, still deeply wanted to see her finally “getting it”, but even he was feeling sympathy pangs because of how completely forlorn she was.

Jack sighed deeply and opened his arms to her. “Come here,” he offered, and Kella quickly walked into her father’s open arms and accepted an embrace. Kella sobbed anew into her father’s chest, her whole body wracked by sobs.

He kissed her forehead.

“I’m sorry!” she croaked.

“I have to punish you, Kella. I can’t believe that you’d just—” He sighed again. “I know you’re disappointed. But I promise—in just a few months you’ll have a husband who will worship you, love you, be destined for you. You’ll forget all this then.”

“I know… I know I need to be punished… but I love him! And I thought maybe we were destined to be together! We got on so well!”

“Kella, that’s not for you to decide. You know it isn’t. It’s not how things are done. Where would we be if everyone just got to choose their mates based on a passing fancy? On lust? Hennar isn’t ready for a mate yet, Sweetheart. It worked out better this way. He’s just started his apprenticeship. He won’t be ready to choose a mate for years …”

Thorton’s mouth hung open. It was all too clear now. Kella had tried to touch Hennar Kolsco… She’d always fancied him, certainly. Kolsco was a second-cousin who they'd met at several family functions and he worked at the library where Kella frequented. But Kolsco was only a couple years older, and if Kolsco had ever showed Kella any endearing affection, Thorton had never witnessed it.

What a horrible move! Thorton thought Kolsco was a little too clean-nosed himself, but obviously he was the type that, if an unmarried woman “attempted” him, he would do the honorable thing and inform her father so that she wouldn’t attempt another male… Thorton couldn’t get over the shock. It was so bold of Kella. She must have been absolutely confident that they were a match.

“I’ve never wanted anything so much…” Kella cried. “I’m so humiliated!”

“You’re not the first girl who’s attempted,” Jack comforted, rubbing her back tenderly with his hand. He was trying his best to remain firm. He didn’t have to try with Thorton—Thorton was sure he hadn’t gotten one ounce of sympathy from Jack in his life. “But there are consequences. You knew there would be.”

Kella pulled slowly apart from her father and put her hand under her shimmery veil just to wipe a tear from her eye. “Please, I learned my lesson already…” she begged.

“But your sisters haven’t. I want to nip this sort of thing in the bud. It’s unacceptable, Kella. You knew it was. You have to reap what you sow. I love you, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off in this…”

She nodded. “Yes, Daddy,” she sniffed.

Jack gave Kella an adoring pinch under the chin and a forgiving smile and then left the room.

Graham and Thorton pulled back and sat on the servant stairs, silently waiting. Thorton had no idea what Jack left to go get or to go do, but it seemed to take a while before he returned, right about the same time that Graham’s four younger sisters started to slowly flood into the room. Ages four to fourteen, Kella and Graham’s sisters came into the room in a group, and announced themselves by gasping in surprise.

Sure, Thorton and Graham exchanged a sheepish expression, one that said, “
Oh, we’re really too old to be looking in on a sibling’s punishment with this sort of satisfaction
,” but they wandered back towards their viewing spot nonetheless.

Since Kella went through puberty, and became a ‘woman’ she'd put on her veil, gloves, and long-sleeves like all other unmarried women wore who were at risk to be mated prematurely. Thorton had seen Kella without her veil since then on only a small handful of occasions, and that’s only when she was eating particularly messy foods. The veil wasn’t distracting; unmarried woman’s veils never hid their face, just glossed across it with a shimmery wave. But without it, Thorton felt like he was peeping at her nakedness. Though she wasn’t naked—she still had her under slip and undershirt on. But the skin on her arms, neck, face, and her hair was now visible without any protection.

Thorton found himself blushing on her behalf.

“Daddy,
we’re
not in trouble, are we? I was a good girl today, I promise!” the four-year-old, Jinga, immediately announced, stepping back in horror, reaching back to cover her bottom with her hands. She had never been old enough to witness one of her sisters’ punishments before. It wasn’t extremely uncommon for Jack to chastise one of his daughters in front of the others, so they could all learn from each other’s mistakes, but Kella had certainly never been the main participant. It seemed much more likely that all the other girls were in trouble rather than Kella being the one who would be spanked.

Jack’s smile betrayed that he observed how cute his youngest was. “You’re right, Jinga. You’re a good girl. Go sit down, please.” He turned towards his other daughters, who were standing tall and straight, prepared to accept his orders. “That goes for the rest of you, as well.” He pointed towards a padded bench, which the girls all slowly walked to, cautious not to make any noise or to look their father too closely in the eye.

“Jack?” Queenie said from the doorway. “What’s this about?”

“Kella has taken it upon herself to try to choose her mate,” Jack announced. Everyone in the room gasped again, including Graham’s mother, who put her hand over her mouth in shock.

“I was also quite shocked,” Jack added in a grumble. “Kella knows full well that that’s an offense against our people, our god, and our traditions. Matches get made when they’re meant to, and the damn festival’s only three months away from now. But she did it anyway. Luckily, the man was honorable and had chosen to contact me rather than take advantage of her when the match didn’t turn out as Kella hoped. It could have been worse, much worse.”

If Kella had been a man, the potential penalty for attempting a woman was also far, far worse. A father could opt to have a man castrated from touching his daughter prematurely. But once that barrier was crossed, some men would touch the girl further. Sometimes, if they felt they would be blamed anyway, would still have sexual relations with the girl, being ‘damned anyway’. That wasn’t unheard of. There was definitely something honorable in admitting to a girl’s father that mating had even been attempted, even if the man was not responsible, even if it was done by accident.

“Kella is a good girl, and yet she did this unspeakable act. That makes me fear for all my daughters. I want you to understand that this is not acceptable. You will wait until your time, and not one second too soon. Is that perfectly clear to you all?” he asked in a firm tone.

“What about Graham?” Jinga asked nervously.

Jack sat in the chair that he had pulled out to the center of the room. “Honey, if Graham touched a girl before his time I would be the last person he’d have to worry about, and he knows it. Even Thorton knows that much.”

Even Thorton?
Thorton looked over at Graham, who only met him with a shrug that seemed to say,
“Why are you surprised? You know you’re the ‘bad kid’.”

“It was horrible of me, Daddy. I’m so sorry,” murmured Kella miserably.

“I’m sorry, too, Kella. Please bring me the paddle I brought in,” Jack told her, gesturing to the desk next to Kella with a nod of his chin.

There was a leather paddle that was practically a family heirloom. Thorton had personally outgrown it when he was nine, the age when Graham and Thorton had graduated to the strop and the belt, but Thorton knew that the leather paddle was still commonly used on the girls… even Jack’s wife, Aunt Queenie.

That’s not the paddle that Kella had clasped in her hands like it was a snake willing to bite her. The paddle that she held in her hands was
wood
. Thorton knew that paddle, too, but he hadn’t seen it in years. It belonged to his mother—who was never strong enough to really put it to very firm use, but before his father’s death, it had been his own father's instrument of choice to use with his wife. On the once-in-a-blue-moon occasions that Thorton’s mother would spank him as a child, the paddle would come out. The last time she had strength enough to take him in hand, however, he had been seven.

It seemed odd to see it in the hand of Jack, and ominous. Even Thorton remembered his tiny, frail little mother packing a wallop with that thing!

For once in his life, he didn’t envy Kella one jot.

“Please, Daddy. Not this,” Thorton could hear Kella beg, but she was so quiet she was barely audible.

“I’m only going to teach this lesson once, Kella,” Jack warned. He looked up at the other girls, who shifted nervously in their seats. “Aren’t I, girls?”

Quickly, he was answered with a chorus of, “Yes, Daddy.”

He grunted and grabbed Kella’s hand and flipped the girl over his thighs and clamped an arm around her. Thorton could see all the girls purse their lips with nervousness as they watched their sister, who had forever been their ‘example’ of how to be, actually go into this position.